home networking issues

[me10lee83]

There are 3 computers on my network- I have a desktop with xp home and a laptop with xp pro and my roommate has a desktop with xp home. All 3 computers are on the same windows network and all 3 show all the other computers in the network connections window, however my desktop and laptop cannot be accessed from any computer. My roommates desktop can be accessed from both my desktop and laptop.

When I try to acces my desktop and laptop I receive this error message "You might not have permission to use the network resources. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found."

My desktop and laptop used to be able to connect to eachother and I made no changes. I have read a lot online about different things to try (download windows server resource tool kit, change registry values to allow annoymous users access, and enabled netbios protocol). Before trying these steps one of my computers (it changed depending on which was restarted last) could not even view the other workgroup computers and the other could view itself and my roommate's comp, after trying some of these fixes I was then able to view all 3 workgroup computers from all 3 computers but I can't figure out what I have to do to access them.

I am running McAffee on both my computers and have checked that the firewall settings are set to allow ip addresses in the local range, and the windows firewall is set to allow file and printer sharing.

I can ping my roommate's comp from both of mine but neither of mine from the other one or hers.

Any other tips to help me view AND access files on my computers from the other computers on the network? Any help would really be appreciated, thanks!

[johnwill]

Failure to ping is almost always a firewall configuration issue.

Turn off any firewalls for debugging. If the firewall is the problem, you'll have to configure it to allow access to "trusted zone" addresses. Note that some firewalls must be completely uninstalled to stop them from affecting your networking.

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt for the following commands.

PING each remote computer by IP address, and if successful, PING by name. Open a command prompt as described above and type.

PING <ip address>
or
PING <computer name>

Where:
<ip address> - is the x.x.x.x IP address
<computer name> - is the computer name

A failure to PING is almost always a firewall configuration issue. Any failure to PING needs to be corrected before you go any farther.

Note: You can obtain the IP address and computer name of a computer by opening a command prompt (DOS window) and typing IPCONFIG /ALL. This should work for any Windows version. The IPCONFIG /ALL display will provide a wealth of useful information for debugging your network connection.

Check your Services are Started on all PCs:

• Computer Browser
• DHCP Client
• DNS Client
• Network Location Awareness
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Server
• TCP/IP Netbios helper
• Workstation

Note: You can check the services in Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services.

All of these services should be started, and their startup type should be automatic.

All computers should be in the same workgroup for computer browsing to function properly. File & Print Sharing has to be enabled on any computer you wish to share files or printers from. You also need to actually share the resource in question from My Computer, right click on the drive/printer/folder, and select sharing.

If you encounter difficulties accessing computers that are visible in Network Neighborhood, make sure the computer being accessed has an account with the same name/password as the system connecting to it uses to login.

While the default NetBIOS setting is correct for normal network configurations, it's possible for it to be altered, and it costs nothing to make sure it's correct. NETBIOS over TCP/IP must be enabled for normal network browsing.

[me10lee83]

Ok so on my McAffee firewall all the ip addresses in my network were listed as trusted IPs, but when I added them again manually it seemed to work. Now I can access my desktop from my laptop and it shows up on the list of workgroup comps, my laptop can manually be accessed by my desktop by typing in the computer name however it does not show up in the list of workgroup computers.

[johnwill]

On each machine, please do this:

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt:

Type the following command:

nbtstat -n

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.

[me10lee83]

The command window opens and then closes itself too quickly to see anything on all computers.

[johnwill]

Try doing it the way I asked. If you do this FIRST, the command prompt will stay open until you close it.

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt:

[me10lee83]

Oops sorry. That's what I get for not reading fully and doing things when I'm tired.

Before I posted from each computer I checked one more time see which computers were showing up and accessible so what I said on here would be current. I discovered that all 3 computers are now showing up when viewing the workgroup, and all 3 are accessible now. I changed nothing on any computers since my post yesterday where I said the laptop was only able to be accessed manually, so why is it all suddenly working? And can I be sure that it will stay working now or is there a chance will it revert back to giving me issues?

I guess it's not neccessary to run the script for the command prompt now that it's all working.

[johnwill]

No need to run the script.

You do realize that for workgroup computing, you may have to wait up to 15 minutes before all the computers will show up in network places, right?